


The Art of Ungentlemanly Warfare - cut scenes and extras

by Owl_by_Night



Series: The Ungentlemanly Warfare AU [2]
Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: F/M, M/M, Multi, World War I, World War II, warnings on individual chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2017-09-03
Packaged: 2018-08-10 03:32:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 9,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7828837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owl_by_Night/pseuds/Owl_by_Night
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of fic, previously posted to Tumblr, that fits into the Ungentlemanly Warfare universe.</p><p>Chapter 1: The Great War<br/>Chapter 2: Pre-canon Grant and William<br/>Chapter 3: Cut scene from the end of Chapter 15 - Arthur<br/>Chapter 4: Cut scene from Chapter 15 - Emma and Walter Pole<br/>Chapter 5: An Ungentlemanly Wager<br/>Chapter 6: A Cornish meeting - birthday fic for etave, post canon Major Merlin<br/>Chapter 7: Choices - Grant and William before the war<br/>Chapter 8: Flyboys and Felines<br/>Chapter 9: A Shoulder to Lean On - Artie realises something about his father's relationship with William<br/>Chapter 10: Parachute - Grant's POV on William's recruitment to SOE</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Other fic from this universe can be found in The Twelve Days of (JSAMN fanfic) Christmas, but these are the snippets of fic that don't fit anywhere else. Each chapter will have its own warnings if necessary. 
> 
> Chapter 1: 101 words per character on the impact of the Great War. Not the most cheerful of fics, dealing as it does with some of the death and grief resulting from the war. Fics are in age order, from youngest character to oldest.

For Arabella, the Great War is a rather distant event. To her as a child, it is a vague catastrophe that adults talk about in hushed voices. There are the memorials and the ladies who visit her father to talk about lost sons, or women without husbands that her mother arranges charity for, but the war itself is distant. The flu has more of an impact, because that is how Jonathan’s mother died and one of her earliest memories is of him crying in their kitchen, trying to hide his tears. She’d sat close beside him, and cried on his behalf. 

For William, the worst thing is that his father never talks about the war. Trying to ask questions will get you a clip around the ear but he’d like to know what it was like; if it really was the way they make it sound in books. His aunt sometimes says that it was war that made his father so strict, that makes him bark orders and hate slowness, stupidity and disobedience. His father certainly sounds different in the stories she tells him about their childhood, but William is young and adults unchangeable, so he rather thinks she’s making it up. 

Colley is named for the father he never met: the telegram announcing his death arriving two months before Colley was born. People tell him, as a boy, that his father was a hero and he believes it without difficulty. His father’s photograph on the mantelpiece is serious, almost severe in his uniform. He gazes down on the small boy, and his boyish misdeeds, an ideal of what a man should be, what a soldier should be. Colley’s mother raises a houseful of boys under the watchful gaze of this absent authority, but when young Colley joins the army himself, she cries. 

Jonathan’s only real memories of the war are of his mother’s sad face above her black dress. Being taken to church in a suit of clothes that itch and watching, from behind his mother’s skirt, the people in mourning. His only other memories are the vague ones of early childhood: nursery teatimes and playing in the garden. Later, he wonders if his mother’s sadness was anything to do with the uncle who died, or if it was just living with his father that caused it, but the influenza epidemic came too soon and he never had a chance to ask her. 

John Segundus spends the war with his mother. The news is always worrying of course, many of their neighbours grieving loses, and he knows his mother fears the post boy, but in some ways life is very peaceful. He has his schoolwork to do, and they spend their quiet evenings together, just the two of them. His father, when he returns, is an interruption to the domestic peace. He is angry and rough, turning his anger towards the boy who flinches from him and resents him. Soon, Segundus is sent away to school, but life is never quite as it was. 

Arthur’s a boy at school during the war, just old enough to wonder if he will have to fight. The older boys, boys he knows, become lists of names on the chapel wall memorial. He tries to understand it, to see the shape of it, from the bits and pieces of news he can find. He’s driven by the why, the how. Later, as a young man at Cambridge, his tutor will ask him about it, question his understanding of the politics, of the cause. Later, he will find a note in his pigeonhole inviting him to London that changes everything. 

John Childermass is too young to go to war, but he’s a tall lad for his age and broad shouldered, so the recruitment office have a reason to turn a blind eye. The army needs these young, strong lads from Yorkshire: cannon fodder though they may be. He feels so proud at first, in his uniform. It doesn’t take long for that to be knocked out of him. It’s a grim life and grim work in the trenches. He feels sick the first time he kills another man. Of all things, it’s the fact that he survives that shocks him most.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Pre-canon Grant was captured by the Germans but has now escaped back to England. 
> 
> Implied past torture, nothing explicit.

The first face Grant sees when he wakes is William’s. He’s sitting with his chair tilted back on two legs, an irritating habit from childhood, but drops forward with a thud that makes Grant’s head ache.  

"Hello sleepyhead,” he says with a smile, “it’s good to see you awake at last.”

He puts a warm hand on Grant’s shoulder. It’s comforting, because Grant feels thoroughly pummelled by recent experiences and kind touches have not been a feature of his imprisonment.  Remembering, he tries to move his hands. They feel strange, numb and unwilling to move but blessedly free of the sharp pain that has been plaguing him. He lifts one and sees it is swathed in thick bandages. 

"Don’t,” William says, gently pressing his wrist down to lie flat against the bed, “let them have a chance to heal.” He looks sad. 

“It’s alright,” Grant says roughly, “"It could be worse.” He says it to be comforting, but he’s not sure it’s true. He needs his hands, needs them to work for him. If he can’t work, he’ll go mad. 

‘'You should never have been there. You can’t do that again, Colley, you just can’t.”

"Was Arthur very angry?”

"Angrier than I’ve ever seen him. He said he’d rather lose the whole fucking unit than put you through that again.”

"I’m sorry.” To his embarrassment Grant feels a lump in his throat. 

"It’s alright,” William smiles at him, the soft, private smile he only wears when they are alone, and his hand strokes gently through Grant’s hair. “"Just promise me you won’t go back. I don’t think I could bear it.”


	3. Chapter 15 cut scene - Arthur

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the end of Chapter 15, Laura has written to Arthur. 
> 
> Warning: this deals with Kitty’s death, grief and Arthur coping badly in slightly self-destructive ways

It has been two years, he realises, staring at the date. Not two years since she died, but two years since the phone call, and then the shock, the disbelief and the early morning drive to the hospital. This time last year he’d been drowning his sorrows in whiskey and a good fuck. Ashamed, the morning after, to imagine her face.  

The anniversary of her death had been spent sober, calling the boys, listening to them cry, reliving and remembering and working until his eyes could hardly focus.  

This year… 

He wonders what Kitty would think of him this year. What she’d say to him, if she could. Would she at least be glad he was behaving better than last year? She didn’t approve of his drinking too much, of his wildness before they married.  He has no idea what she’d think of the fact that last year’s good fuck is this year’s absent lover. In all their years of marriage he never said anything about his past relationships with men. Bad enough she knew about the women, but he wonders if she suspected. They had their secrets, the two of them. He can’t pretend it was perfect. Yet he misses her, the calmness of having her to go home to, the certainty of her love. 

He misses William differently.  

He doesn’t have much to remember Kitty by: so many things were lost in the house, buried beneath debris, demolished or destroyed by water when they put out the fire. He has none of her clothing, or her perfume, none of the furniture they chose together or the music they listened to. The photographs he has were from her parents. Two years on his memories are sometimes blurred by time and sometimes agonisingly sharp. Some days he can still hear the ring of her laughter, or catch the scent of her hair. Sometimes she seems almost unreal, a bland smiling face in a photograph that he can’t believe once belonged to someone living. 

He tries to picture her, to ask her what he should do. She’d have words with him about the boys, of that he has no doubt. She’d be telling him to see them, to talk to them. Telling him not to bury himself in work so much that he forgets he has a family who need him. She’s said it before, so it’s no great stretch of the imagination. He wishes he’d listened at the time but he always thought there would be another day to fix it, more time ahead to make up for it. 

For her opinion on William though, he has no such guide. It’s a hard thing to accept that there are questions he cannot ask her, that there will be an ever-increasing number of days where he can guess her opinion but never know it. This, above all things, makes him grieve for what was lost, grieving perhaps selfishly for himself and the hollowed out place inside him that will always feel empty no matter how much whiskey he drinks or how many beautiful young men he takes to his bed. Missing William is a very different kind of absence. It’s warm, living. He hopes, however much he tries not to, and the contrast between that hope and the cold, eternal certainty of Kitty’s absence is a shock in itself.  

That first anniversary he’d been angry, almost. Not an anger he’d let out, but he’d been rough, pushed harder than he’d meant and William… God, William had taken it, even seemed to enjoy it, pushing back, touch for touch and bite for bite. Afterwards, with the wild feeling gone leaving only a queasy sense of regret, William had got up and dressed, watching him all the while with an unreadable expression, and kissed him. “I don’t know what that was about, but if you want to do it again some time you know where I am,” he’d said, and gone.

They have, thank God, come a long way since then. 

Is two years enough time to learn to love someone else? It’s not as though he’s moved on entirely, not as though he has forgotten. His grief for Kitty and his love for William seem to exist in two different spheres, but is that any reason to believe that William is not worth just as much?

“You always make things so complicated, Arthur.”  He can hear Kitty saying it. “Will it make you happy?”

Maybe it’s what she would have said.  Maybe it’s just his imagination giving him an excuse. Either way, it’s enough for now. He picks up his pen and writes.

_Dear Mrs De Lancey,_

_Thank you for your letter…._


	4. Chapter 15 cut scene - Emma and Walter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after Emma and Arabella return from France, Emma and Sir Walter have breakfast together.

In a fashionable house in London, Emma Pole takes her seat at the table with a calm that gives no outward sign of her not having sat down to breakfast in this house for several years. 

“Good morning,” Walter offers, looking up from his coffee and newspaper.  

“Good morning, Sir Walter.” Emma greets him calmly and then helps herself to toast and the regulation scraping of butter in silence. 

It wasn’t always like this. When they first married, when they were engaged, the two of them had at least talked.  They hadn’t married for love, Walter had had his career to think of, but they had been able to manage civil conversation over the breakfast table and it wasn’t that he hadn’t  _cared_. 

There is a sudden noise from outside, a bang like the slamming of a door.  Emma flinches when she hears it, dropping her knife onto the plate with a clatter.  It shocks Walter to recognise the response, the instinctive reaction to something that might be gunfire.  He has seen it before in soldiers: he never expected to see it in his own wife.  

“My dear,” he says, the endearment sounding awkward from disuse.  He hasn’t had cause to say such things since the day that Emma announced she was leaving to stay with friends and would not be returning.  

“Yes, Sir Walter?” Her tone is icy, as though daring him to comment.  He hardly recognises her as the woman he married, for all she’s dressed in one of her pre-war dresses, one she must have left behind.  Have they really grown so far apart?

“I thought, perhaps, we could go to the country for a while.  Get out of London.  I can’t leave work, obviously, but I could manage a few days.  It would be quieter there, perhaps we could… talk.”

“I am going back to the continent, Sir Walter, to help my friends.  I will go as soon as I am able.  I have no wish to go back to being a helpless wife, doing nothing, while there is work still to be done.”

Walter opens his mouth to protest and then stops.  Emma looks as though she is ready for an argument.  

“I was…” Walter pushes his newspaper into a neater pile.  This sort of conversation does not come naturally to him.  “My dear, I… when I heard you had been captured I was… concerned, very concerned indeed.  I had no idea that you were in such danger.  I thought you were safe, in the country with friends.  I liked to think that you were safe.  And I was worried.”

“You cannot ask me to stay in safety when there are other men and women in danger, Sir Walter.  You cannot ask me to give it up when you do war work of your own, in London, with the air raids.  You have not been safe either.”

“No, I know that and,” he looks up, decision made, “I won’t ask you to stay.  Not if you feel that you have to go.”

“Thank you, Walter.”

He notices the lack of his title, a small concession perhaps but something.  

“Until you go back, you are very welcome to stay here.  I hope you will stay here.  It is your home, if you want it.  I shall be at work most of the time: I won’t trouble you.”

“Then I will stay, for the time being.  Thank you.” Emma looks up, meeting his eyes without hostility for the first time.  They both look away again quickly but Walter can’t help smiling down at his newspaper.  They continue breakfast in silence, but it’s a more comfortable silence than before.  


	5. An Ungentlemanly Wager

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written after a photograph of a naked man in nothing but army boots and a hat appeared on tumblr. 
> 
> Some time after Ungentlemanly Warfare ends, Merlin unwisely makes a bet with William

“Jonathan!” 

Arabella’s yelp of surprise makes Jonathan turn, looking over his shoulder at her from where he is fastening of his boots. 

“Yes darling?”

“Jonathan…” Bell stares open mouthed for a moment and then gives herself a shake. “Jonathan why are you naked? And get your boot off the chair! What are you thinking?” 

“I’m afraid I… I’m afraid I was talking to William in the pub last night…” Jonathan removes his foot from the chair and stands there with a sheepish look on his face. 

“Oh Jonathan, how could you? What did Colley tell you?”

“I know, I know, never make bets with William."  Jonathan sighs. Arabella feels her mouth twitching with involuntary laughter. He does look so entirely absurd in his hat and boots. And so very attractive too. 

"You know, Colley will be very sorry not to have seen the view I had just now."  

"Really?” Jonathan says with the beginnings of a smirk. 

“That does not mean I approve! Please tell me you are not going out of this room like that?"  

"Bell, darling Bell, the problem is, a bet is a bet and this is a matter of honour…"  

Bell raises one eyebrow. He wilts. 

"Jonathan, I am going back to work. I suggest that you think long and hard about whether you really want the entire unit to see you in this state. I assure you, it’s not a sight to be easily forgotten."  

Five minutes later Arabella realises that it was a mistake to leave then. She should have stayed and pushed her advantage while he was suitably cowed. Instead she has given him time to recover his bravado.  And so, in a scene that will forever be seared into her memory, she has to watch as her husband leaves his office and strolls nonchalantly through the main workroom without a stitch of clothing except his socks. 

The reaction begins as a ripple of sound across the room, people shifting in chairs, elbowing one another and whispering as he makes his progress across the room. His head is held defiantly high. Arabella meets Grant’s eyes across the room: he is flushing scarlet above his uniform shirt. She wonders if part of his embarrassment is from seeing the bruise he is responsible for, dark against Jonathan’s pale skin in front of everyone. 

Bent over a set of flight plans, Arthur doesn’t look up at first, but eventually the murmur rises beyond the level he can ignore. From her vantage point, Arabella can see as his initially startled look is wiped from his face and replaced with a bland expression that would be a credit to the best poker players. 

"Lieutenant Strange,” he says, “is there something I can help you with?” 

“I, uh, I wondered if you had finished with the weather forecasts for the Channel.” Jonathan is struggling to maintain his composure now. There are a few stifled giggles. Grant has buried his face on the desk and is making soft groaning noises that could be despair or incipient hysteria. 

Arthur leans back, folds his arms and lets his gaze travel the length of Jonathan’s body and back up, openly assessing. 

“Unfortunately we’re not done with the forecasts yet, Merlin. We need more time to finalise the route. In the meantime, I suggest you go back to your office and see if there’s anything you might have forgotten to do this morning. I’m sure if you focus you’ll remember something."  

"Yes, Sir."  Jonathan salutes. There are sniggers from around the room and a high pitched wail of laughter, quickly suppressed. Jonathan turns, cheeks flushed, to make his way back through the crowd. 

"Merlin?” Arthur’s voice stops him when he is half way back. Arthur doesn’t even look up from his map as he says, “don’t do that again. I expect my officers to be properly dressed."  His tone is as casual as can be, but the atmosphere of the room changes abruptly from hilarity to anticipation. In the hush, William lets out a ill-advised whoop of laughter. 

"De Lancey."  The full force of Arthur at his most snappishly dictatorial comes to bear on William. "My office. Now.” 

“Sir?” William struggles to keep a straight face. 

“Do you think I can’t recognise your handiwork? Go.”   

William goes. Jonathan, saying nothing, walks off with a renewed swagger.  The door of Arthur’s office bangs shut and the room erupts into laughter. 

Arabella, torn between laughter of her own and mortification at Jonathan’s behaviour, takes a memo pad from her desk. Jonathan honestly deserves a good spanking for this and she knows just the man to deliver it.  She scribbles a note in Morse code at speed and folds it. She’ll pick Grant’s pocket later and leave it there for him to find.  If Jonathan is determined to humiliate her, she will have her revenge. 

 ~

In Arthur’s office, the laughter is still audible. 

"Sit,” he barks, and William folds himself down onto the chair opposite the desk. 

“I suppose you thought a laugh would be good for morale."  

"Yes, Sir."  

Arthur glares at him. Then he retrieves his wallet and extracts a five pound note. 

"I should have listened to Grant, shouldn’t I?"  

"You should,” William says smugly, “but then you’d never have bet me I couldn’t get Merlin naked." 


	6. Birthday fic for Etave/A Cornish meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the wonderful Etave 
> 
> In a small Cornish cottage, Grant waits for the boat that will reunite him with Jonathan. Based on a real place in Cornwall which was used to land SOE agents, a bit of Major Merlin shipping in the post-Ungentlemanly era.

In the small cottage, Grant stretches and checks the clock once more. Nearly time to go down to the beach to wait for the boat. He puts down his book, noting the page, and fetches his coat from the rack by the door.

Outside the night is very still. He came here two days ago, all the way to the far reaches of Cornwall to a small, obscure village on the banks of the Helford river. It’s little more than a cluster of cottages and fishing sheds around the wide bay onto the river. SOE have been using it as a convenient place to land boats, bringing agents to and from the continent, without anyone observing. Tonight, the cargo to be landed is more precious to Grant than any other. Jonathan, abroad for over a month, is finally being sent home.

He walks down the pebbled shoreline, well wrapped against the cold. Out on the dark water there is the faint, repetitive sound of masts and rigging tapping against one another on the moored boats. Then, quieter still, the hum of a motor approaching from down river. His heart jumps at the sound of it.

There’s a brief flash of light from the water. Torch in hand, Grant makes the quick circle and flash of morse code that was their agreed signal that it would be safe to land. The boat draws nearer and the motor cuts out. Under the power of two men rowing, she makes her slow and steady way to the beach, landing in a crunch of gravel.

Grant steps forward, catching the bows and the slick, algae-covered rope of her anchor. In close to silence the men drag her up, just enough for Jonathan to step over the side and into safety. Then, up to their knees in water, they push her back out again. With nothing but the creak of oars, she vanishes into the gloom as if she had never been there at all.

On the dark beach, the two of them hold one another hard. Jonathan is wet through, sea soaked, smelling of salt and sweat and the faint, electric tang that gathers around him whenever he has been doing powerful magic. Grant hugs him fiercely, nose buried into the warm skin of his neck.

“Come with me,” he says quietly, “we don’t want to be caught in the open.”

He leads the way back to the cottage as quietly as he can. Inside, he closes the door and lights the lamp, allowing himself the first proper sight of Jonathan.  He is dressed like a fisherman, in a canvas smock and heavy oilskin coat, his hair disordered by the wind and sea spray. He looks tired, with dark circles under his eyes and lines where Grant doesn’t expect to see them. By contrast, Grant looks perfectly ordinary, apart from his soaked trousers and boots.

It is the cold that forces them to move. Grant struggles out of wet shoes and socks, padding to the fire to add more wood and wincing as the damp fabric of his trousers clings coldly to his ankles. Jonathan struggles with the wet fastenings of his coat.

“Come on, get out of those before you freeze,” Grant tells him, going to help. Jonathan stops him.

“I missed you,” he says, holding Grant’s warm hands tight between his cold ones, “so much.”

“I missed you too. We both did.”

“Both of you? Bell’s alright? I saw it was you on the beach and I was worried…”

“No, she’s alright. Wishing she didn’t to have to wait to see you.”

Jonathan kisses him then, desperately, seeking reassurance. Grant indulges him. At least until the ache of his cold, bare feet becomes too much to ignore.

“You need a hot bath,” he says, “before you catch a chill.”

“A bath?” Jonathan asks incredulously. “Here?”

“Yes, here, although you’ll have to pray that the boiler is working.”

The bathroom is unusual for somewhere so remote, but someone must have thought it was worth it when bringing in cold, wet agents, lest they freeze before they can share their intelligence. The weather at sea wasn’t too bad tonight, for winter, but some of the crossings Grant has heard about were wild.

The geyser boiler must have heard his prayers because it sputters into life. Jonathan, stripped of his coat, tackles the rest of his clothing. Grant helps, undoing fastenings too stiff for cold fingers. Soon Jonathan is naked and shivering, skin dimpled with gooseflesh. There’s a half healed cut on his shoulder, running jagged towards the hair on his chest, and three more cuts across the palm of one hand. A wilder magician than the one who left them weeks ago. He’s thinner too and shuddering with the kind of cold that doesn’t leave easily.

Grant remembers the feeling: the shock at being home and safe, with euphoria and tiredness crashing in to one another. He strips himself of his jumper, shirt and soaking trousers. He’d have stood out like a sore thumb in uniform down here, so he’s been in civvies, which now feel more like a disguise than how he used to dress.

They end up in the tub together, Grant sitting behind Jonathan and holding him, running warm hands over Jonathan’s cold arms and shoulders, waiting for body heat and hot water to do their work. He keeps up a light conversation about what Jonathan has missed back home, about the gossip from the ungentlemanly magicians. Jonathan wants to hear about Bell: the small details, the things she has done or said, and about Grant himself. It feels good to be asked, to have someone care for him enough to want, even need, to know all the things that have been missed, knitting their lives back together where they have been separate.

Slowly Grant turns the conversation to work, to what Jonathan has been doing. He always wants to hear an agent’s first account of a mission immediately afterwards, before they have had time to edit things into a report in their heads, or smoothed out the details that might later be important. It’s familiar, but he’s never get done it quite like this, with both of them naked together in the bath, limbs tangled and the weight of Jonathan’s body against him, somehow all the more intimate for not being intimate at all. It still has the power to shock him at times, in his relationship with the Stranges, how much can be shared and how easily.

It would be tempting to stay longer, but work calls. He steps out of the bath, despite Jonathan’s protests, pushing the soap into his hands.

“Wash,” he says, “you smell like one of the magicians from the restoration.”

Jonathan makes an affronted noise and ducks under the surface, emerging in a wave of water, spluttering and dripping. Grant cannot help but kiss him, brushing water from his mouth and sucking at his lip. Jonathan groans.

“Later,” Grant tells him.

“I have been waiting for weeks,” Jonathan says, “with nothing more than memories to go on.”

His tone and the look on his face make Grant want to give in, but he doesn’t want to have to explain why he missed his arranged call to headquarters.

“Then you can wait an hour or two longer,” he says lightly, shaking his head just a little.

Jonathan sighs, catching the unspoken, and sinks back into the water.

Grant dresses again in dry clothes and makes his way downstairs. There’s just enough time to rinse the salt water from their wet clothes and drape them to dry by the fire. They will need proper washing, but not here. He dumps the wet boots outside the door to drain and sniffs the cold, sharp air. He’s lucky it was a clear night to bring the boat in, but the lack of cloud has sharpened the winter chill to biting.

The radio has been packed in its safely anonymous case for fear of unexpected visitors, but he opens it now. It crackles to life and the hot wire and static smell reminds him of Jonathan, splashing about upstairs, half humming and half singing a tune Grant thinks is probably French. He drafts his message, already in coded phrases, encrypts it and sends it.

While transmitting the message, Jonathan reappears from the bathroom in clean pyjamas and a thick jumper that Grant brought for him. He drapes himself around Grant’s shoulders and presses his face into his hair. Grant, to his credit, never once lets the pattern of the morse code falter beneath his fingers. Not even when Jonathan kisses the curve of his ear or the skin under it.

“You really are incorrigible, aren’t you?” he asks, mock scowling up at Jonathan with his message safely sent.

“I missed you.  And I know you’re too good to let me distract you.”

Grant smiles at him, half pleased at the compliment, half loving exasperation. He burns his draft message and the sheet from the one time pad he used for encryption in the fire, poking them to the middle of the blaze so no trace is left.

“I suppose you’re hungry,” he says, watching Jonathan’s eyes light up. Food is still scarce in France, particularly when you are in hiding.

He has eggs, from the hens that scratch around the village, and half a stale loaf. Jonathan makes tea while Grant poaches eggs and makes toast.

“It’s strange,” Jonathan says, “being back here, in an English kitchen, not having to go anywhere or be ready to run.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Grant says, “quicker than you expect. It’s harder, with the long trips, but it will be normal again sooner than you know it.”

“I think… I think I’m still looking over my shoulder. Still thinking about who might come through the door. I didn’t have much time to be afraid, at the time.”  

“I know.”

Grant squeezes his shoulder and puts food on the plate, grating a bit of cheese over the egg. This is what’s needed: hot food, strong tea, then sleep.

Jonathan eats by the fire, basking in the warmth while Grant sips tea. He ate earlier, but it’s the middle of the night now. He steals a corner of Jonathan’s toast and nibbles it.

“You know what I miss,” Jonathan says, polishing off the last of the food before Grant can help himself to any more.

“Toasted bloody cheese?” Grant asks in perfect mimicry of Winespill’s accent. It’s a very old running joke for them all. Jonathan laughs anyway.

“You do his accent very well you know. Better than the others”

“It’s the training.” Grant shrugs. “I’m learning the Cornish accent now, my ‘ansum”

Jonathan laughs again, then yawns.

“Bed,” Grant tells him, “you need to sleep.  When did you last manage it?”

“On the boat, for a bit, not a lot for a day before that.”

“Bed then. You can sleep as long as you need.”

“What’s the plan for tomorrow?”

“Nothing in the day. We’ll leave in the evening, once it’s dark.”  

“A night drive then?”

“Only to the station at Penzance. We’ll get the first train up to London in the morning.”

“I’m glad I have you for company,” Jonathan says. “I didn’t expect it.”  

“I asked.” Grant looks away, mildly embarrassed.  "I wanted to.“  

"And Arthur agreed?”

“Yes.”

“Arthur? Arthur ‘I know nothing about this, don’t do anything I’d have to notice’ Wellesley let you travel down to Cornwall?”

“Well, at the moment he also 'knows nothing’ about the entire litter of kittens William is keeping in his office so I think his ability to turn a blind eye is improving.”

“A litter of… really? There are kittens in the office?” Jonathan looks delighted.

“Yes. Bell says you are very definitely not allowed to adopt more than one.”

They laugh together at the absurdity of it.

“Kittens aside,” Jonathan says, suddenly serious, “thank you for meeting me.”

“Any time.”

The sheets in the bedroom are cold. Jonathan slips under them still dressed in his pyjamas. Grant regrets that they aren’t somewhere warmer, aren’t home in their own cottage where the bedroom is cosy and there are three of them to heat the blankets. He’d like to keep touching Jonathan, skin to skin, missing the comfort of it.  

“Here,” he says to distract himself until the room is warmer, “Bell sent you this.  To be opened at bedtime.” He hands over the thick envelope he’s been carrying in his jacket pocket since he left. The edges are crumpled by it, but he doubts Jonathan will mind. Jonathan presses his nose to the paper and Grant wonders if it smells of both of them, of his body and Bell’s perfume.

He didn’t ask what it said. It’s something between the two of them, in the way that there are some things that he and Jonathan share alone, and he and Bell do too. He’s had Bell to himself all the time that Jonathan has been away, and he doesn’t begrudge them this.

He goes downstairs to bank the fire and douse the lamp. The nights are long now, and still there is no hint of dawn in the sky when he looks. He goes back upstairs to find Jonathan curled on his side, letter in hand. There’s also a drawing. Jonathan rubs his thumb gently over the edges of it. It’s a sketch Grant made of Bell, naked and sleepy in their bed. She is propped up on one elbow, looking at him, hair falling down over one shoulder.

“I didn’t know she’d sent you that,” Grant says.  He’s slightly embarrassed that she did, but the look on Jonathan’s face makes him glad she did. Jonathan couldn’t have taken a drawing or photograph away with him, nothing that could be identified. He hasn’t seen Bell since he left.

“She sent this too.” Jonathan shows him the other page. It’s one of Bell’s sketches this time, of Grant. He flushes to the roots of his hair. Bell has drawn him in _every_ detail.

“Well,” he says, clearing his throat, “you have been away for a while. We had to keep ourselves busy.”

“It’s been too long.”

“It has. We missed you very much.”

“I didn’t realise… not until now, just how hard it has been, being away from you both.” Jonathan blinks hard at the drawings, and Grant knows how he feels. Wound tight for weeks and then suddenly released. The point where, in the old days, he’d have been reaching for the whisky bottle in his desk.

This time he has a different plan. He takes the pages gently from Jonathan’s hand and kisses him. His hand, cupping Jonathan’s jaw, can feel the rapid flutter of his pulse under the skin.

“If you’re not too tired…” he says. Jonathan shakes his head.

He tugs Jonathan’s woollen jumper up and off, tousling his hair, and reaches for the buttons of his pyjamas. Jonathan sighs and shivers under the touch, not just from the cold room. He clings almost feverishly, until Grant says “steady, it’s alright, I’ve got you.”

Jonathan stares at him, wild eyed and well kissed. “I love you.”

“I know.” He strokes his hand through Jonathan’s hair until his eyes close. “I know. Let me take care of you.”

At the first touch of Grant’s mouth on his cock, Jonathan drops back against the pillows. He groans, and Grant can feel the tension ebbing out of him, the muscles of his thighs relaxing under Grant’s hands. He savours it. The feel of Jonathan in his mouth, the taste of him, the quiet sounds he makes. He looks down at Grant, expression soft and dazed. Grant pulls back enough to smile up at him, then bobs his head back down to make him swear.

It is a very sweet, slow kind of lovemaking tonight. Jonathan is pliant and willing, yielding himself up with a lazy smile on his face. He rolls his hips, pressing close, offering more. Grant is dizzy with the heat of him, with his apparent surrender. He fucks him with the slow and steady pace that Bell likes to blame on military precision and that Jonathan squirms under, always wanting more. Always wanting faster and harder and more. He’d usually beg, but tonight he gives himself up to it and spills, untouched, between them.

Afterwards, Grant holds Jonathan close, spooned together in the bed. His hand rests over Jonathan’s heart, feeling the regular thud of it beating, slower than before. Outside, the waves break quietly on the shore, much quieter than the open sea but still a regular rush and lull of sound. Dawn will be breaking soon, lighting the dark river and weaving sunlight through the trees on the shore. Somewhere, far out to sea, the boat that brought Jonathan home is heading who knows where on her next journey. The world is waiting for the two of them to rejoin it. But not yet. Not just yet.


	7. Choices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A bit of the Ungentlemanly AU that wouldn’t leave me alone. 
> 
> This is set pre-war, which means William is 23 and Grant 24. Contains De Grancey, nakedness, politics and mentions of William’s father (not a happy topic). Not a particularly happy fic. 
> 
> Note - circuits and bumps if the RAF term for training ie taking off, circling and landing again over and over

“I suppose I should go soon.”

It’s the second time William has said it, but he shows no signs of leaving.  He’s sprawled in Grant’s bed, cigarette in hand, body laid bare in all it’s tempting glory.

Grant, sitting in his armchair and similarly lacking in clothes, reaches out with one foot and pokes William’s bare thigh.

“You said that half an hour ago.”

“I know, and now I mean it.  My father’s expecting me for dinner.”

Grant grimaces and drops his newspaper to the floor.

“So, do you mean you have to leave now or is there a bit of time?”  He reaches over William to drop his cigarette in the ashtray.  “We should make the most of the time you have.”

William lunges up to catch him and pull him down to the bed.  He wriggles against Grant, mouthing at his neck and then kissing him properly.

“I shouldn’t though,” he says, pulling back.  “He’s in a foul mood already.  Being late will only make it worse.”

“What did you do this time?”

“Nothing, thank you.  For once he can’t blame me.  It’s that.”  William nods his head towards the discarded newspaper.

“The news?”

“He thinks war is inevitable now.  He’s taking it personally, because the last war didn’t stop it and he fought for nothing.  Although why he’s taking it out on me is a mystery.  I think he doesn’t think I’d have the courage to do what he did.”

“William…”

“But he’s also determined that I won’t leave the firm.  My mother said there’s no living with him like this.”

“Oh William.”

William drops his head heavily against Grant’s shoulder.  Grant rubs a hand over his shoulders.  It’s always been this way: William and his father at loggerheads and William coming to Grant for comfort.  It explains the desperation earlier; the way William had stripped him almost fiercely from his clothes and begged to be fucked.  They are quiet a moment, William pulling himself back together in the silence.

He gives himself a shake.  “So,” he says, almost visibly slamming the door shut on the topic of his father, “if it is war, does that mean you’ll fight?”

“William,” Grant says, half laughing, his hand tugging at William’s hair, “I doubt the British army would let me do anything else.”

“Yes, I know, if you will go joining the army instead of boring yourself stupid in an office like the rest of us.  But if you hadn’t joined them already, would you go?”

“I don’t know.”  Grant stares at the ceiling and tries to imagine his life without the army, without the comforting simplicity of knowing that he has already chosen.  He joined the army because his father had joined, and his father before him.  It was what the Grant men did, and there was always conflict somewhere.

“I don’t know either,” William says thoughtfully, and the idea of it is like a kick to Grant’s ribs.  Somehow in all of this, he hadn’t thought of William joining up.  It makes the reality of it, the horror of what’s happening and what might have to be done to prevent it, abruptly very real and very personal.

“I suppose you think it’s ridiculous,” William says.

“No, I don’t.”

“It’s only… if things do end up as bad as they say, if they ask for volunteers, I don’t see how I could do anything else.”

“No.”

The world seems to be waiting on a precipice, waiting to become a place where everyone will have to choose.  To act or not to act.  To fight or not to fight.  A world where William, his William, friend from boyhood, always careless and carefree, might choose something so serious.

“Not the army though,” William says, rolling on top of him, “that’s your thing.”  He lowers his head and bites at Grant’s collarbone.

“William!” Grant says, half in protest, half in defense of his choice.

“I thought the RAF would be better.”  William’s tone is teasing again, momentary seriousness forgotten.  “Don’t you think I’d look better in blue than that awful brown you get?”

“I don’t think you should decide that based on the colour of the uniforms.”

“How else am I meant to decide?” William pauses in his progress down the length of Grant’s body.  He is serious again, a frown flickering over his face.  “It all matters, doesn’t it?  So long as you do _something_.”

“William…” Grant stops, lost for words.  It’s all wrong, having this conversation.  There’s a foolish hope in his heart that maybe it won’t be real, that it won’t really turn out as he fears, and he tries to crush it.  The fear of it has a weight, pressing on him.

“Don’t Colley,” William says, shaking his head, “don’t let’s talk about it any more.  I’d rather think about something else.”

He knows well enough how to be a distraction, how to put his mouth to better uses than talking and Grant is willing to be distracted for now.  For a time, it is necessary to put aside the future and enjoy the present.  Far more than half an hour later, Grant kisses him goodbye and they go their separate ways: William to make what peace he can with his father and Grant to his dinner with army friends.

By the time William does join up, Grant is already overseas in France with the British Expeditionary Forces.  He gets a letter, full of RAF jargon about ‘circuits and bumps’, bad food, friends made and the thrill of flying.  There’s a photograph too: William, in uniform, smiling at the camera.  Impossible to tell from the photograph, but Grant can imagine the blue of the uniform, and how much it would suit him.  He thinks of his own photograph on his mother’s mantelpiece, of the photograph in his room of the two of them as boys.  They are so far from those days now.  Both of them soldiers: in this to the end, whatever the end will be.  


	8. Flyboys and Felines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for the fan_flashworks prompt 'abandon'. Artie and Charlie find a litter of abandoned kittens. 
> 
> These are the kittens mentioned in Chapter 6. Fic contains mild kitten peril and excessive fluff.

Artie comes home with a torn sweater, a cut lip and three wet kittens in his jumper. Charlie, lagging three steps behind in his sodden shoes, has another kitten clinging to his shirt.   
“They were abandoned,” Artie says, clutching at the damp wool and it’s squeaking burdens.   
“They were going to drown them,” Charlie adds, fierce with indignation. His knuckles are grazed, something William decides not to notice. That can be for Arthur to sort out. In the meantime, he has bigger fish to fry.   
“You can’t…” he begins, stopping short when he meets two sets of reproachful eyes. The kitten Charlie is holding opens a small, pink mouth and mews. “You can’t take care of kittens when you’re soaking wet yourselves,” he says, rather feebly even to his own ears. “Put them in the kitchen and go and change.”   
The boys thunder up the stairs, leaving William with a kitchen full of kittens. Arthur, he thinks, is going to kill him. 

Arthur comes home late: a good two hours after his shift was due to end. Trying to be quiet to avoid waking the house, he lets himself in by torch light and stumbles over two pairs of boys’ shoes, stuffed with newspaper and left to dry in the hall. He muffles his instinctive shout but there’s a soft ‘hello’ from the kitchen. Followed by what sounds distinctly like a mew.   
Already suspicious, he ventures into the kitchen and finds William, not making late night tea as he’d hoped, but sat on a pile of cushions on the kitchen floor. There is a basket of kittens next to him and one kitten curled on his chest. It is kneading his blue dressing gown with small paws.   
“We have new lodgers, I see,” Arthur says. William looks guilty.   
“The boys found them.”  
“Of course they did. And you took pity on them.”   
“They were being abandoned, no, not just abandoned, deliberately drowned, the poor things.” The kitten in William’s hand struggles when he raises his voice, squeaking plaintively. He lifts a dropper of milk and the kitten bats at it. Arthur crouches down to watch the feeding process with the attention it seems to deserve.   
“You’re very good at that,” he observes, “have you rescued kittens before?”   
“No,” William grins at him. “Colley taught me, but I’ve had a lot of practise now. The boys were helping but I sent them to bed. They promised to get up for the 6 am feeding time.”   
“Very diligent of them. Is that my milk ration you’re feeding them?”   
“No, yours is safe. This is mine, and some from Beatie. She donated the basket too, and Flora from the pub gave us a tin of sardines. They don’t like the Ellis boys any more than Charlie does as it happens.”   
“Do I want to know who the Ellis boys are? Or is that something I’m going to have to talk to Charlie about tomorrow morning?”   
“Don’t be too hard on him.”   
“I won’t.” Arthur reaches out and runs a finger down the back of one of the kittens in the basket. It chirrups at him. He recognises the blanket in the basket as his own grey jumper, given to William and now apparently passed on again. “And what are we going to do with you, hmm? Once you outgrow this basket and eat us out of milk and sardines?”   
“Ah,” William says, “I wondered when you were going to ask that.”   
“I’m afraid I have to. I don’t want to disappoint the boys but four cats might be too many.”   
“Well,” Wiiliam says slowly, “I thought the ground crew could do with a mouser. Can’t have rats around the aircraft. And Flora did say she’d like to take one of them when they are older. Her father didn’t seem keen but I’d put money on her being able to talk him into anything. Beatie already has Tabitha though, who isn’t going to put up with having a kitten around.”   
“So that’s two.”  
“Colley was sure Jonathan would want one of them once he’d seen them.”   
“Of course he would. And what about him?” Arthur looks more closely at the kitten William is still holding. He’s a fluffy little thing, mostly black with white socks and white under his chin.   
“He’s the runt of the litter,” William says rather defensively, “which is why he’s getting extra rations.” He looks at the kitten and the look on his face is so soft that Arthur realises there’s no decision to make here after all. He can probably live with that.   
“So, he’s ours then.”   
William looks up at him, beaming. He reminds Arthur very forcibly of the boys, and a distant part of his mind acknowledges that he has no will power at all in the face of their happiness. He holds out a hand for the kitten to sniff. It licks his finger with a small, rough tongue. As kittens go, it seems like a promising introduction.


	9. A Shoulder to Lean On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Artie realises something about Arthur and William’s relationship
> 
> Written for the fan_flashworks prompt 'shoulder'. Contains off screen character death and mention of period typical attitudes to sexuality

The first time that Artie realises the nature of his father's relationship with William is the day that William's own father dies.   
  
The telephone call seems unimportant at first, his father excusing himself to answer it as he always does if it rings. The calls are usually for him; the work he never talks about does not keep to set hours. Artie wouldn't have thought anything of it apart from the tone of his father's voice when he calls William from the room. It’s somewhere between an adult’s awareness and a child’s intuition that tells him to keep half an ear on the conversation, not able to hear the words but aware that something serious must be happening.   
  
He knows it's wrong to eavesdrop but still he finds himself drawn to the door, peering round into the hall and fearing the worst even though he isn’t sure what the worst would be. William is sitting on the chair by the telephone, hunched over. Artie cannot see his face but that posture tells him everything he needs to know. His father is kneeling in front of William, with a hand on his arm, and as Artie watches he pulls him forward, tucking William’s head into the crook of his shoulder and holding him there.    
  
It could have meant nothing. Certainly when he finds out what has happened, when William is packing and they are waiting for the taxi to take him to the station to catch a train home, it doesn’t seem so strange that William might need comfort or that Artie’s father might offer it. But somehow, in that moment, he knows it is more.    
  
Afterwards, lying in bed and unable to sleep despite how late it is, he cannot stop thinking about it. He has never seen a grown man cry before. Not even his father when their mother died. It runs round in his head, what it means that William could cry. He sees over and over again the way that William had leaned on Arthur, the tenderness of it. It’s shocking, but there’s also a kind of rightness to it, something that falls into place in his mind.    
  
There’s fear as well, all the schoolboy comments he’s ever heard and the fact that his own father is doing something illegal, something that people call sinful. It changes what he thought he knew about his father, about his parents’ marriage. It changes something that he knows about himself.    
  
He gets up, unable to bear staying in bed any longer. His father is in the hall again as he comes down the stairs, holding the phone to his ear. It must be William, Artie realises, calling to say that he has arrived. His father looks up at him and he knows.    
  
“Sleep as well as you can then,” his father says, and then, very deliberately, “I love you.”    
  
He puts the phone down. Artie hesitates, half way down the stairs with his hand running over the smooth wood of the bannisters for comfort. He doesn’t know what to say. It’s too much to take in, all at once. Too much to know he was right, too tangled up to know if he wants to ask first about his mother or whether he ought to say something else. To say that it’s alright. If it is alright, which he thinks it is. He likes William after all. Although he’d never thought of him in that way, as someone his father loves.    
  
His father is watching him, very calmly and without saying a word. It steadies him, even though his father’s watchful eye usually makes him flustered.    
  
“So,” his father says, “I suppose you’d like to talk?”    
  
“Yes,” Artie says, feeling something shift in the air between them. This isn’t going to be the usual kind of ‘serious talk’, he realises, but something more equal. Something his father is trusting him with. “Is William alright, Dad?” he asks as he descends the last few stairs, because the asking matters. It seems to be the right thing to say because his father smiles then, a proper smile.    
  
“He will be,” he says, and his hand on Artie’s shoulder is warm. 


	10. Parachute

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> William is his best friend, but there are things he cannot say.
> 
> Written for the fan_flashworks prompt 'Best' and set before Ungentlemanly Warfare. It is a companion to 'Recruitment' which can be found in the first Twelve Days of JSAMN Christmas. I am choosing not to give specific warnings for this fic, although none of the AO3 warnings apply. It does however deal with the effect of being a flyboy during the war.

There are things he's never going to tell William. About the shadows under William's eyes and the way his hand shakes sometimes. William must know about it, Grant can see him being careful. Holding his glass just so, to hide the tremor. But he doesn't say anything so Grant isn't going to either. William has said too much before about pilots being condemned for Lack of Moral Fibre for Grant to risk saying something that implies William is visibly under stress. Grant also doesn't ask why William didn't go home to Laura for his crash leave, even when it coincided with Christmas.   
  
They go out to celebrate. William drinks a lot, too much maybe, and with the ease of someone used to drinking. He talks a bit, about night flying and near misses. He does a light hearted routine, as befits a flyboy, but the smile on his face doesn't quite match his old smile and his jokes hover uneasily on the boundary of being too bleak to be funny. He speaks of his crew, or fellow pilots, with affection but in the past tense. Grant wonders first if they have been transferred elsewhere and is glad he didn't ask when it becomes obvious that the men William talks about are dead.   
  
Sharing Grant's room and the only bed, William makes excuses not to sleep. He claims wakefulness, not needing to sleep much any more, being used to flying at night. It is only when Grant himself pretends not to be tired and intending to stay up that William finally sleeps, apparently reassured by someone else being on guard. Stripped to his underwear, the bruises of a parachute harness are still visible on his shoulders. Grant has had the same bruises a few times now after going into France, but never so deep. There are marks on his hands too, telling the story of how hard William must have fought to get out of his cockpit and away from his falling, burning plane. Somehow the only one left, even though he stayed the longest to give his crew time to escape.   
  
He looks older. Grant can see it, in a shocked way that he doesn't feel when he looks at his own face in the mirror, even though he knows that Dunkirk has left a mark on him. Somehow the William in his mind had been untouched. Still half a schoolboy as he was when he joined up. Lying awake and listening to William, snoring like a man getting his first good sleep in weeks, Grant comes to the realisation that if William keeps doing this it will kill him. He'll be flying himself to death if the Germans don't get there first. He also knows that William will never give it up, certainly not to save his own neck.   
  
They have been friends for a long time now: they've shared a great many things. Things Grant cannot imagine sharing with anyone else. Their school days and holidays, from the humiliation of dancing lessons to first kisses, finding their way in life as boys and then young men. Grant had even been William's best man when he married Laura. They are closer than Grant is to his brothers. It is unimaginable to have a future without William in it.   
  
Arthur Wellesley wants a pilot for the new team they are forming. That much is true, and they need someone they know is good, someone with courage aplenty. Wellesley had told him to find the best pilot he could. Perhaps it is biased to choose a friend, but Grant sees it more as a way to solve two problems. Give the unit its flyboy and maybe, just maybe, save William's life along with it. Given the circumstances it's the best thing he can do. 


End file.
